IRS Dive Bomber: The Anatomy of a Meme

Remember how vigorously Libs tried to distance Islam from the massacre at Ft. Hood? Hassan was a psychologically disturbed PTSD victim, they told us. A lone nut. We mustn’t jump to conclusions! Lookie the little bird over there! Nothing to see here! Remember? I mean, it’s not like the shooter was yelling “Allahu Akbar” at the top of his lungs or anything like that as he mowed everybody down. Right? Oh wait. By contrast, when the IRS dive bomber struck, the same Libbies did precisely the opposite as they RUSHED to link him with the Tea Pary. Since day one, Libs have been trying to turn Joseph Stack into a Tea Party poster child. Frank Rich at the NY Times is calling it an “axis of the deranged,” but the only thing deranged is his dishonest meme. So far he is the second major Lib that I’ve seen PURPOSELY OMIT certain crucial facts in order to further their slander. They’ve got nothing, of course, but like most memes, they hope sheer repetition will bludgeon the association straight into your cerebral cortex the same way Timothy McVeigh as “christian” terrorist was branded into the national psyche– through sheer repetition–despite the fact there was little or no evidence he was even a christian, let alone committed his crime in the name of religion. Here Powerline takes the dishonest Frank Rich apart with all the precision of a surgeon:

Frank Rich of the New York Times retired as a drama critic in order to take up his new role as the paper’s full-time drama queen. As an op-ed columnist for the Times, his assignment, apparently, is to write in such a hysterical fashion that Paul Krugman seems rational by comparison.

Currently, the most-recommended article on the Times web site is Rich’s column, “The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged.” The “axis,” as described by Rich, includes 1) a murderer, 2) kooks, 3) Tea Partiers, and 4) Republican politicians and Presidential candidates. The point of Rich’s column is to suggest, in his usual subtle fashion, that these groups are more or less interchangeable.

Rich starts with “the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.” The last sentence is classic Rich. I’ll hazard a guess that Stack’s murder-suicide was not an omen of anything, and will not ignite a rash of intentional airplane crashes.

Rich admits that “Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a ‘Tea Party terrorist.'” No kidding: Stack had zero connection to the Tea Party movement. None. So why would it occur to anyone to refer to him as a “Tea Party terrorist”? This is not guilt by association, this is guilt despite a complete lack of association. Rich suggests that the answer lies in Stack’s online political screed:

But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.

No, it doesn’t. Stack’s essay is left-wing, not right-wing; it ends with a denunciation of capitalism and a quote from the Communist Manifesto. The Tea Party is a highly diverse movement, but you will find very few Communists in it.

Rich proceeds to try to tie conservatives and Republican politicians to this suicidal left-winger:

That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.

I can’t find any “shrines to [Stack’s] martyrdom” on Facebook, although there are a number of anti-Stack groups. The only one that could be considered pro-Stack is called “His Name is Joseph Stack.” It has a whopping 343 members. Since the Facebook page highlights Stack’s quote from the Communist Manifesto, I assume most of the group’s members are Communist sympathizers and likely are members of Rich’s Democratic Party. The Facebook group was started by a kid who graduated from high school last June and works in a deli. I don’t think we’re seeing a noteworthy political movement here.